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Heavy Goods

Note : Anyone who reads this and starts to foam at the mouth at any perceived ‘anti-cyclist’ stance, “never been on a bike in his life, wouldn’t understand, etc, etc”, should really read the previous post before continuing.

In further cycle campaign based lunacy, it would appear that “cyclists” have been busy lobbying the EU

Legislation requiring hauliers to fit the 450,000 lorries in Britain with sensors and emergency braking systems is being examined in Brussels following intensive lobbying by relatives of a young woman killed when she was dragged under the wheels of a HGV

Bummer. And what was this poor young woman doing at the time ?

… as it turned without the driver noticing her in the vehicle’s “blind spot”.

Oh I see.

It is – of course – a tragedy when someone is killed, and more tragic if that death could have been avoided. It is an even greater tragedy when the death could so easily have been avoided by the recently deceased.

By, y’know, not riding down the side of a lorry, in its blind spot. Were I a coroner, I’d write that up as suicide.

Still, at least the bereaved family didn’t immediately blame the driver, who could have done absolutely nothing to prevent the incident.

They have a five point action plan – and yes, of course, this will involve spending some of your money. And some of other people’s money that will eventually end up costing you more of yours. Natch.

1 Cyclist-awareness training for drivers

All city lorry drivers should be have ongoing cycle-awareness training, including on-bike experience.

2 Drivers must take more responsibility

Authorities must recognise driver responsibility for doing everything practical to reduce risks. Blaming a ‘blind spot’ should be an admission of guilt.

3 Safer design for London lorries

Lorries designed for off-road use should be taken off city streets. The best mirrors, cameras and sensors should be fitted as standard.

4 Higher standards from lorry operators

Quality-assurance schemes such as London’s Freight Operator Recognition Scheme (FORS) should be mandatory, and the police encouraged to crack down on rogue operators.

5 More responsible procurement

Companies must only buy haulage services from reputable firms, with government taking a lead in encouraging best practice.

Red tape, bureaucracy, legislation, quangos, enforcement. And not one bit of it the responsibility of the actual cyclist. Hmm. In fairness, at the bottom of their action plan is this further point that they haven’t even graced with a number

Plus: Better education for cyclists

Cyclists must be given the most accurate and up-to-date information on riding safely around lorries.

Let me save you the first five and completely implement the unnumbered, insignificant ‘plus’ : Don’t. If you are the sort of person who requires guidance as to when and how it is safe to cycle around a lorry, frankly, it is not safe for you to cycle around a lorry, so just don’t.

The life you save may be your own.

Legislation, Legislation, Legislation

Of course, it is to be understood that the grieving relatives of the recently deceased often make hysterical, emotive and frankly unreasonable demands of the world, been there, done that.

Campaigners called for hauliers to be compelled to buy equipment which alerts drivers if a cyclist pulls up alongside them and brings the vehicle to an automatic halt if there is a risk of a collision.

But as we’re all smart monkeys, we know this, and so there’s no danger of this stupidity – which strikes me as potentially dangerous in itself – passing through the EU as actual legislation is there ?

The Independent understands that Brussels will table changes to pan-European safety legislation by August, while an existing directive requiring all new HGVs to be fitted with cyclist sensors and automatic braking will come into force in 2013.

Oh, fucksticks.

And will this be expensive ?

The haulage industry said it was committed to improving safety for cyclists, pointing out that freight operators had spent £78m since 2008 on retro-fitting mirrors to their fleets.

Yes. If it cost 78M just to fit some mirrors, I think we can probably safely assume that fitting some crazy futuristic cyclist seeking radar and autopilot equipment will be hideously, outrageously, expensive.

Mirror, Mirror, on the, er, Junction. WTF ?

Until today, I had never heard of a Trixi MIrror, then I came across this petition while digging through a twitter search.

We the undersigned call upon the Mayor, as Chair of TfL, and the Members of the Greater London Authority to:

– Immediately install “Trixi” mirrors at every A Road junction, starting with the A503, Camden Road, then move on to B Roads. Let’s have London-wide safety for our cyclists, not a patchwork cover.

Have you guessed what a Trixi Mirror is yet ? (Perhaps this is common knowledge?) Here’s a pic and an apposite quote from the Guardian, which illustrate it nicely.

Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, is seeking government approval to place mirrors at traffic lights to prevent collisions by revealing cyclists and pedestrians hidden in lorries’ blind spots.

So again, lots of lovely taxpayer lolly to be spent on letting drivers know when people are in their blind spots.

Once more with feeling

Look at that picture. Look at the cycle lane. See where the cyclist has had to ride to get to that forward box at the junction ? Yup, right through the HGV’s blind spot. This is stupid. And the solution to this problem is not to add the mirror to make it safe to do so.

Far cheaper option is simply to remove the priority boxes, lose the mirrors and for cyclists who are stuck behind a lorry or bus to just wait there and deal with it.

Look ma, I just saved a bucketload of other peoples’ money. Oh, and some lives.Note: Anyone feeling the urge to rush to the comments and leave a snarky message about traffic fumes, don’t bother, I ride bus lanes. If it bothers you, don’t cycle on the roads. Or buy a mask. Or get off and walk around on the pavement.

I will simply reiterate what I said last time. Your safety on a bicycle is your responsibility. You take your life in your hands. If you rely on things like trixy mirrors, putative cyborg lorry systems, other people’s awareness of you or any other road features to keep you safe, you will be dead soon. And it will be largely your own fault.

Wise, wise words :

Because if you’ve put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe — to see you, and to give a fuck — you’ve already blown it.Neal Stephenson – Zodiac

Riding Blind

For my first post in a long long time, I’m going to talk about some things I have rarely mentioned since I started this blog. Those being cycling and blindness.

There is a reason – apart from whimsy – why this blog is called “Blind Cyclists’ Union”. I am a long time cyclist, and I am also ‘blind’. You’ll note that I’ve put quotes around that ‘blind’ there, because, apparently, ‘blind’ is a spectrum rather than a binary condition.

Well, it is according to those who are responsible for labelling the disabled in order to better pigeon-hole and patronise them – as the DWP (and they should know!) tells us :

Most people who are registered blind have some degree of residual vision.

Yeah, it came as a surprise to me as well, but there you go, in order to be registered blind, you don’t actually have to be.

So the question arises : “How blind ?”. And the answer is, frankly, fucked if I know. I mean how am I supposed to measure it ? Blind enough to be registered, that’s for sure, which is moire than blind enough to fail the mandatory DVLA sight test by a wide margin. It used to be a red letter day if I managed to guess the second line on an eye chart. It’s not correctable, and it obviously degrades with age like everybody else’s. There are additional complications around dazzling from bright lights, ‘floaters’ and various stuff.

Whatever. Anyway, 99.9% of the time this is utterly and profoundly irrelevant. I only bring it up because of a recent spate of spew from the cycling lobby which has particularly boiled my piss.

On Yer Bike

As I mentioned above, I am also a cyclist. I have been since I was a child. I ride on the roads. Less so these days – in my late 30s I trust my reactions less than I used to – but still reasonably regularly. Shock horror, eh ?

Anyway, there’s the background on my end, lets get on with the overheated urine.

Fuck Off Jon Snow

Initially my ire was aroused by this piece in the Indy, whereby Jon (C4 News Snow), the CTC and the Indy have all started a campaign to “Save our cyclists”.

Here’s a gem

The campaign aims to protect cyclists from lorries and buses, which account for a disproportionate number of the 230 cyclists killed or seriously injured every month on Britain’s roads.

HGVs and buses are the largest vehicles on the roads, and have by far the most limited fields of view. You are likely to be KSId if one drives over you, that’s for sure. Then again, they are the most visible – and most visibly dangerous – vehicles on the road as well, so it should be a surprise that they are involved with so many cycle deaths. But somehow I don’t think that’s the point that the Indy is trying to make.

Ambush Predator flags up that on the same day the AA launched a cycling safety campaign by giving away a huge number of free helmets and hi vis tabards. I’d have taken them up on that like a shot, free stuff – what’s not to like ?

Well according to the Evening Standard article AP links to and to it’s author’s blog a number of cyclists did indeed take the huff. The published comments are sourced directly from Twitter – of course – here’s a gem :

@RossLydall Maybe cyclists could reciprocate by giving out free eye-glasses and copies of the Highway Code to drivers.

Wait A Mo, Did You Say On The Roads ?

@geographyjim’s timeline contains various other tweets insinuating that all cycle deaths are the fault of poor drivers, criminals in charge of HGVs and the like. I am living proof that this is simply not true.

I’ve been riding around on the roads – busy roads mind you – with lorries and buses for more than twenty years, and I am not dead. Here is a full list of all the accidents I have had in that time involving other vehicles.

Cluster Bomb

Age around 13, riding down my own street my chain came off, looked down at chain, became one with parked red Renault 5 stuffing face through rear driver side light cluster. Ouch. Knocked on owners door, paid for damage – well, my rightly angry dad paid, and it took many weeks of car washing and the like to pay it off. Spent about an hour picking glass and plastic out of face. Entirely my fault.

Junction Dysfunction

Age maybe 15, Riding home from school along busy A road, approaching minor junction with cul-de-sac, judged safe to cross junction as nose to tail traffic blocking vehicle egress from junction. Driver of white Ford Sierra decides to poke his nose out anyway, not paying attention, hits me. Arrive at road surface via bounce off red Ford Transit van on my right who was also crossing junction. Minor scrapes to me + van. Front teeth removed from Sierra driver by owner of red Transit, front bumper of Sierra ripped free by cycle pedal. Fault ? 50/50. He wasn’t looking, but his idiot behaviour was entirely predictable. I should have been watching him, not judging simply by traffic conditions. Surprised ? Transit driver was, he entirely blamed Sierra man. And he made him pay for the dent.

Rib ‘n’ Saucy

Age 30+, proceeding at speed (35 MPH) down steep hill through small light industrial area, vehicle (silver two door hatchback of some kind) reverses out of parking area in front of light industrial unit. Doesn’t see me. Taking evasive action I go wide and hit the kerbstone on the other side of the hill resulting in spectacular and very long distance pile up. Vehicle drives off, almost certainly never saw me. I arrive at destination 30 miles later bruised and bloodied. Subsequently it turns out that I have bust almost the ribs down the right side of my body and a couple on the left. That made the two mile stretch of disused rail track fun.

Fault ? Mine entirely. I know the road, I was going way to fast for the hazard level and not paying enough attention.

That’s all of them.

Dead Hippy Axle Dressing

So, if all of these cycling KSIs can be blamed on drivers, someone needs to tell me how come I – with my ‘low vision’/’partial/restricted sight’/blindness or whatever we’re calling it this week – have been managing to cycle around on busy roads and in bus lanes, four lane roundabouts with HGVs, hordes of zombie commuters and distracted school run mums with overloaded cars full of screaming brats and have only had three accidents in over twenty years, all of which were entirely or partially my fault ?

Surely by now I should have been murdered by one of these feckless criminal zombie drivers the cycling lobby are so keen to blame for all the accidents ? But I haven’t.

Situational Awareness

Because if you’ve put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe — to see you, and to give a fuck — you’ve already blown it.Neal Stephenson – Zodiac

The above is from some exposition in the cited novel about cycling in a city, they are words I have – literally – lived by.

If you are on a bicycle on the road it is your responsibility to pay attention to your safety. It is not a safe fluffy environment for cyclists, get used to it. Never assume that someone can see you, never put yourself in a position where they need to in order for you to keep your life. Situational awareness and anticipation skills can be developed to the point where even a blindy like me can ride around on the road without being killed or even seriously injured. If you cycle about the place with the arrogance of a self righteous hippy :

Jamie Crick, a presenter on Classic FM, also contacted The Independent to register his support. He said: “My producer and I both cycle into Classic FM and have been swapping terror stories. The lack of provision for cyclists is woeful in London.

Soon you will die. Simples.

I’m blind and I’m not dead. What’s your excuse ?

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Ian Dent, whom I heavily criticised in my last post (or the automated cut’n’paste bot that claims to be him, it’s hard to tell) took the trouble to leave a reply. It’s long, and it’s largely irrelevant, like his report, you can read the full reply here

I’m mostly concerned with this bit, since the rest was utter cockwaffle, so much so that it would barely pass a Turing Test :

This document, produced by Ian Dent, has been orchestrated so as to stimulate the beginnings of a much needed public debate – to raise questions about decisions currently being made over our future, solely by ICT experts and the European Commission with NO active public debate in a common language.

Bollocks. The way it is framed, and the absolutely appalling way in which it is referenced, your busy swapping between UK and US styles of quotation that makes most of it look like ‘scare quotes’, and your complete misunderstanding of computer science terms of art contribute nothing to any such debate other than confusion.

Take IanPJ for instance, who claims to be trying to track down the EU document that he erroneously believes your quoted text “An ‘object’ in this [computing] context … ” to be drawn from.

The poor sod is convinced that because it’s a quote in a report about the EU that the relevant, sinister documentation must be buried deep within the EU. Had you referenced it, you could have saved him the ghastly heartache of this fruitless search, because it is taken directly from the Wikipedia article on Object Oriented Computing.

That part is double quoted, though unreferenced, and the rest of the time you seem to be using single quotes almost at random.

The phrase ‘Biological Economic Device’ appears to be your coinage, but you’ve put it in single quotes and bold for emphasis. Writing like this encourages the unwary to believe that everything you say is attributable to the EU, when in fact most of it is not.

As an academic is simply impossible that you are not aware of the proper conventions for quoting, referencing and footnoting, so one can only assume that your failure to use them properly here is a purposeful distortion.

We can see the results of that distortion, fielded with the weight of your academic credentials in IanPJ’s behaviour. He has run off completely confused in some paranoid never was fantasy panic.

So no Ian, your report contributes only confusion to any such debate, and I would also point out that the privacy and social implications of technology are being widely debated every single day. You managed to use Google to do most of your research, so how did you miss that ?

And last but not least, Ian

These are technical, complex and largely ‘un-soundbite-able’ issues. So a few references may help readers to investigate for themselves in a more measured and balanced way:

Well yes, Indeed they would, so why have you provided so few in your report ?

FFS

I rarely click on Ian Parker Joseph’s twitter links, he is after all the main reason I felt I couldn’t join the UKLP. He does a great job of illustrating why it’s good that he is no longer the leader today.

This was his tweet :

An idiot, earlier

Good god! Could that be true ? That would be dynamite. Worth a click for once.

Idiotarians

Well no, of course, it isn’t true at all. It’s not even hyperbole, it’s just bullshit. Pure and simple. I can’t be arsed to fisk Ian’s godawful post in its entirety, so lets just pull out the relevant parts. Ian says :

Over the past week, as the result of being passed some high level academic reports in the field of technology and ICT reasearch, I have been doing my homework, researching the claims made in the documents, and looking for corroborating EU documentation.

OMG! So far so shadowy. He was passed some “high level academic reports”, bloody hell! No. He wasn’t. The report that he refers to is in fact on line here which of course just adds to the hilarity when Ian promises to email anyone a copy, and subsequently ‘makes it available’ in a download. How fucking generous of him.

For whatever reason he decides that he doesn’t want you to know that this is a freely available document. Presumably he feels it adds to his mystique. To everyone else, not linking to source is just plain fucking rude.

Citation needed

Enter one Ian Dent, allegedly of Cambridge University, although if that’s true they seriously need to sack the fucker. Ian is quoting from the linked document “Beyond Broadband – The True Cost Of Digital Britain” by the aforesaid Dent.

Here is the money quote from Dent’s ‘report ‘(his emphasis)

In computing terms (where the concept originated), an ‘attribute’ can be defined as: ‘a specification that defines a property of an object, element, or file . . ‘ An ‘object’ in this [computing] context can be defined as: a collection of co-operating objects . . . capable of receiving messages, processing data and sending messages to other objects and can be viewed as an independent ‘machine’ with a distinct role or responsibility . .
This is how each person will become defined within Grid profiling – as an object – a ‘Biological Economic Device’.

Wow, Just Fucking Wow

So Dent here goes from a straightforward definition of a computer science term (a definition which, incidentally, he hasn’t referenced) to suggesting that a phrase he has just made up based on it is how we will all become defined by the EU.

No.

I would recommend against reading Dent’s eleven pages of poorly referenced and clearly delusional word salad, – which contains more than the average Daily Mail’s worth of ‘scare quotes’ – in it’s entirety. It will probably actually make you stupider. But this is just stupid. And for someone who is supposedly a Cambridge academic it is practically unforgivable. No citation, no reference. Not true.

Ian, however is prepared to report this as though it were some kind of hard, verifiable fact, rather than just some paranoid phrase that Dent coins on page 17 of his ridiculous screed.

Since Dent doesn’t cite any document that supports his delusion, perhaps the redoubtable IanPJ can help us out, since he states

(documents are there.. if you can find them)

Wow! Links to them ? No.

Seriously people, do better

I have no love for the EU, it’s a crawling horror of a bureaucracy, largely unelected and almost completely unaccountable, but for fuck’s sake people, shout them down for real things that they actually do, rather than just making shit up.

Like this:

Finding it incredible this afternoon that even as Conservative and Lib Dem MPs (or at least leadership teams) are actually acting like adults and talking about deals and compromise and common ground and all sorts of grown up stuff like that, every time the grass-roots activists and voters appear on TV they act more and more like vicious, petulant, squabbling children.

Cameron, of course, doesn’t need to worry to much about his grass-roots, because their affiliation is broadly tribal and his party structure doesn’t require him to ask, or even care, about their opinions. They’ll still vote Conservative, because they simply can’t imagine doing otherwise.

Clegg doesn’t have quite the same kind of tribal affiliation, but his core support is united behind a banner of “Tories are evil fox rapists”, and in his case, the democratic structure of his party means he does have to ask them. And a goodly number of them are going to be simply appalled that he is even talking to Cameron.

Amusingly, this could lead to the delicious situation whereby Clegg manages to ram PR past the Tories and then experiences epic electoral fail in an election run under it because the beardie weirides will never forgive him for dealing the right. Because thatcher, or progressive, or something.

In my previous post I ranted on incoherently and at length about the Tribal Fuckmuppetry involved in British politics, which demands loyalty to the party and nothing else, to the exclusion of other things like rational thought.

And then, as if by magic, I came across a perfect example in the form of everyone’s favourite tory media whore and prima facie tribal fuckmuppet Iain Dale’s comment on the hillarious spectacle of a Labour PPC calling Brown “The worst prime minister ever” which received quite wide coverage this morning.

Naturally, Iain agrees that Brown is a fucking disaster as PM, but then he goes on to rather neatly illustrate my point about tribal fuckmuppets and their effect on democracy like this

Sood has blasted the Labour leader and surely now faces suspension, even though he has spokenn the truth. What I don’t understand is that if he really thinks this, why did he ever stand as a Labour candidate

It hasn’t occurred to Iain that the chap could be loyal to the ideology that the Labour party was founded to represent and finds that Brown is not, as many Labour voters have also noticed. It hasn’t occurred to him that perhaps not everyone in the Labour party agrees with Gordon on everything, which is a curious oversight, because Iain likes to write about division in the Labour party.

No, at the sight of open division in the ranks, Dale’s first instinct is that the man should be suspended and he should never have joined Labour if he disagreed with the Great Leader.

And Iain Dale is a Tory tribal fuckmuppet.

NB that as I say, Iain is aware, and writes about, divisions in all of the parties, so either his “obey the tribe” instinct kicked in very strongly and overrode his rational thought processes, or it’s OK to have bitter divisions as long as they’re behind closed doors where the plebs won’t see them, and only the tribal elders, Iains blog, the Daily Mail and the Telegraph are aware of them.

Like this:

Dearth

–noun

1.

an inadequate supply; scarcity; lack: There is a dearth of good engineers.

2.

scarcity and dearness of food; famine.

Blue Rinse And Pearls

I live in the North East, although I didn’t always. I grew up in Cheshire. Poles apart you might say. Or even ‘polls’ apart in fact. I didn’t live in the leafy poshtown ‘footballers wives’ bit of Cheshire, but I did go to school there. Indeed I used to live (just) in what is now George Osborne’s constituency and was once that of Neil Hamilton – a man I met on many occasions and who contributed greatly to my image of politics as being a hive of desperate, self interested, sleazy, grasping cunts.

Often along with the gurning fuckmuppet Winterton, he was a fixture at all sorts of fetes, fairs and charity bashes that I attended – my parents being tireless workers for charridee – as well as perpetrating several school visits – the last of which, as I recall, caused a mass exodus of pupils via a window, this being the preferable option to spending time with him.

Hamilton – and indeed Winterton – were the sort of MPs that would – as the saying goes – attend the opening of a bus shelter. They were personally well known to many of their constituents. As a whippersnapper, my impression of them was very much as stated above. Hamilton in particular practically sweats sleaze, and shaking hands with him could make you feel like you needed to take a shower. The less said about Winterton the better, quite frankly.

The point, of course, is that I was by no means alone in feeling this way. You didn’t have to spend much time around Hamilton to realise that he was – as the saying goes – a complete and utter cunt.

And yet the Tatton constituency remained – and remains – resolutely blue. barring the one protest vote for Martin Bell when Hamilton was finally documented in behaving like a desperate, self interested, sleazy, grasping cunt. The interesting thing about that vote, of course, is that Al ‘axe wound’ Campbell convinced the Lib Dems that it would be a huge laugh if both they and Labour withdrew their candidates. Crucially this left the Cheshire set with a candidate they could vote for who – while not a Conservative – was not a Labour or LibDem candidate either.

Manic Miners

Now I live in the North East. In most of the constituencies I spend time in, despite several having predominantly LibDem councils, it is a mystery to most people why the Conservatives or LibDems even bother to field candidates for general (or by-) elections.

I don’t move in such exalted circles any more, and while I have corresponded with my local MP, I have never met him or any of those from neighbouring constituency. That hardly matters, as Labour’s record of the last 13 years speaks volumes about how it regards the loyal reds of the North East. With contempt. This is not something which has gone unnoticed, either. The many mining villages ravaged by the attempts of the trade unions to violently overthrow democracy and install a ginger trot junta (or ‘Thatcher’ as they abbreviate it round here) are still, despite 13 years of a Labour government who you might reasonably have expected to do something about it, shit holes. Characterised by poverty, domestic violence, teenage parents, crime and ignorance.

And yet the North East remains – and is likely to remain – resolutely red.

Tribal Fuckmuppets

The now infamous Mrs Gillian Duffy rather neatly summed up this situation when she described how her Grandfather and Father had been ‘Labour men’. You hear it all the time from nasty smug Labour drones “labour is in my blood”, “my family has voted labour for generations”. These deluded fucktards were indoctrinated with their parent’s voting habits – at the expense of rational thought – from birth. No matter what the Labour party do – illegal wars, taxing the poor, trampling all over the long held tenets of the justice system, conniving at torture, hypocritically ignoring or weasling out of their responsibilities under the very Human Rights that they themselves are so proud of codifying into UK law, breaches of electoral law, candidates arrested for drink driving after piling their car into roundabouts, a minister convicted of driving while on his mobile – they aren’t the Tories and so can never be as bad.

This is not limited to the North East by any means. Nor, in fact, is is it limited to the Labour party. In Cheshire, people bring their kids up Tory. When I lived there the local Young Conservative group was large and active. And stocked out with people whose mummies and daddies were Conservative to the core and had indoctrinated their children to be the same. Most of them were also glassy eyed automatons, devoid of rational thought, repeating the same Tory screeds their parents and local party reps had taught them by wrote. Ad nauseum, in many cases, and in a memorable few, ad punching hard in the face by children who hadn’t been so programmed.

The Now Obligatory BNP Reference

In a remarkably similar way were racist attitudes passed from father to son, many were the playground discussions regarding why some racial group or other should be taunted that started with the phrase “My dad says all [insert racist epithet here] are [insert some kind of slur here, dirty, thieves, whatever]”. It shouldn’t be surprising really, because what all these indoctrinated attitudes amount to is a taught intolerance to some group or other, be it evil tories, ruinous socialists, or thieving gypsies.

This doesn’t account for all the tribal fuckmuppets, some people who fall heavily into this category have picked their team based on pressure from their peers, or just because they needed to pick someone to support and now they must offer unquestioning loyalty. Much in the same way as people choose to support football teams, I suppose.

A Dearth Of Democracy

The problem with this – aside from the fact that crippling your child’s or your own critical faculties in such a manner is butt clenchingly stupid – is that it leads to a situation where a large proportion of the UK electorate, despite being otherwise sensible, intelligent, compassionate and rational people will not go to the polls on Thursday and place their cross in a box based on either substance or style, nor even based on their subscription to a particular ideology , but based on tribal loyalty and an indoctrinated hatred of some other tribe.

By outsourcing some portion of their critical faculties to whatever bunch of conniving shitweasels are sporting the appropriately coloured rosette, the tribal fuckmuppets have, willingly or otherwise, conspired to keep the amount of democracy to an absolute minimum. Every five years, the 25,000 or so voters who aren’t tribal fuckmuppets get to decide which bunch of liars and thieves have the best posters. And that’s it. You can – and I have – get access to your local MP and if s/he is a good constituency MP they might even help to represent your views. Unless they conflict with those of the MPs party of course, in which case you are shit out of luck.

The conniving shitweasels, of course, know this, which is why they don’t want to change it. This is why, despite having 13 years of legislative opportunity, Labour have never reformed the electoral system. This why the Conservatives prefer the first past the post system and have pledged to keep it all costs.

The conniving shitweasels will tell you that we need ‘strong government’, which is politician speak for an administration that can ram whatever shitty legislation it wants down the country’s throat because no one can stop them. You might canvass your MP against such legislation, but it won’t matter because their party will whip them until they toe the line.

The conniving shitweasels fear a hung parliament or a slim majority because they do not like democracy at all. They know best, and they mean to have their way. Democracy would actively prevent this, because they’d have to get consent from others. This would mean reaching a consensus, like proper grown ups, and reaching a consensus is nowhere near as much fun as wielding power.

This Is All Your Fault

If you are one of those tribal fuckmuppets, if you have always voted the same way, if you have unquestioningly pledged your loyalty to one bunch of conniving shitweasels, if you do it because your dad did it, or your gran, if you are Labour for Life, or Tory forever, or a tedious tubthumper for any other party here is a message for you.

You are the enemy of democracy. Grow the fuck up. It is because of you that we are ruled, not served. It is because of you that we are subjects, not citizens. It is because of you that we have no referenda, the conniving shitweasels know they can count on your support whatever they do, so they don’t need to ask the rest of us.

It is because of you that there has been no electoral reform, it is because of you that the party system and the whip system still exist, because your unquestioning loyalty to a shower of bastards has allowed it to be so.

In the immortal words of Paul Wicker “May the lord have mercy on your souls, you ignorant snivelling fuckpigs.” Because whatever is about to happen, and it is likely to be unremittingly unpleasant, it is your fault.